1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an industrial truck, in particular a reach truck, with a lateral maintenance opening.
2. Technical Considerations
Industrial trucks are produced in various designs, for example as counterweight fork-lift trucks, reach trucks, reach-fork trucks, driver's platform trucks or pedestrian controlled trucks. A large number of assemblies and drive components of the various functions of the industrial truck are arranged in a drive part of the industrial truck. These include, for example, an electric traction drive motor, a brake fluid container, an electrically-driven hydraulic pump, a power electronics unit, electrical fuses, a hydraulic tank, a hydraulic oil filter, a battery block and electric connectors, in particular for connecting the battery block to the power electronics unit.
Many of these aforementioned parts must be accessible for regular inspection and maintenance work. For example, an external battery charging device can be plugged in at the electric connector in order to charge the battery block. During the replacement of the battery block, an external voltage source can be plugged into the truck-side connector, in particular in order to be able to supply the traction drive with power independently of the battery block. The level in the hydraulic tank must be checked regularly and must be topped up as required. The same is true of the brake fluid container. Likewise, the level of the battery acid in the battery block must be monitored regularly and equalized with distilled water as required. The electrical fuses of the industrial truck must be accessible simply in order to be able to actuate or replace them as required. The hydraulic oil filter must likewise be accessible simply, since this must be changed or cleaned at regular intervals.
In the industrial trucks of the known art, the aforementioned components of the industrial truck, to which regular access is necessary for maintenance and inspection work, are frequently arranged at different points in the industrial truck and are thus not centrally accessible. For this reason, known industrial trucks from the known art have a large number of maintenance accesses, through which the above-described inspection and maintenance work can be carried out. This applies, in particular, to reach trucks and reach-fork trucks, in which the various assemblies and drive components are normally distributed to installation locations underneath the driver's platform, underneath the operating panel and on the load side of the driver's platform. As a result of the necessary opening and closing of a plurality of maintenance openings, carrying out the regular inspection and maintenance work is complicated and time-consuming.
The present invention is, therefore, based on the object of simplifying the performance of the regular inspection and maintenance work.